The funniest sketch I’ve ever seen
I watched the Monty Python spam sketch when it first went out – that now seems a little bit like being someone who remembers hearing the announcement of the second world war when it started, it’s part of history. My mum and dad hated Monty Python because it broke the rules and they didn’t often let me watch it. This one night I was allowed to, and I just cried and cried. What made it funnier was my mum and dad just looking at me like, “What’s the matter with him, this isn’t funny.”
The funniest number
Fifty-nine, because it’s a lot of most things, but also ridiculously specific. How many people have we got coming round for Christmas dinner? Fifty-nine!
The funniest joke I’ve ever heard
In The Simpsons, Bart is asked: “If you could be an animal what would you be?”. And he says, “I’d be a butterfly, because nobody ever suspects the butterfly.” And then you see in his mind, the school is burnt to the ground and there’s a butterfly with a Bart head and he’s got a can of petrol. That’s probably the best and most subversive joke I’ve ever seen in mainstream television.
The funniest film I’ve ever seen
The first Richard Pryor standup I saw, at an all-night film session at the Ritzy cinema in Brixton in about 1981. I’d never heard of him and it just came on at three in the morning. That’s the most I’ve ever laughed at a film. That probably changed everything for me.
The funniest heckle I’ve ever had
I remember one night when I did the clubs, I think I was at Up the Creek, and someone shouted “Show us your fridge”. The whole of the rest of the gig just became about this man.
The funniest word
Leopard. Because it’s really not appropriate most of the time.
The funniest thing that shouldn’t be funny
Everything that shouldn’t be funny is funny to a comic. We’re evil.
Mark Steel: Every Little Thing’s Gonna Be Alright is at Assembly Hall, Edinburgh, 26-27 August
